Yesterday we awoke at 7am local time, and after a bigger than normal
breakfast, made a bee line
directly for the Kennedy Space Center. I’ve rambled about this place in
the past, so I won’t go on about it again, but we spent much of the day
there, I got some fantastic photos, and just before 5, we left and
headed for Titusville, our intended destination for watching the shuttle
launch scheduled for 4am the following morning – this morning. We were surprised to find that, even 11 hours before the scheduled
launch, the Titusville coast (from which you observe the launch across a
large river) was rapidly becoming packed with parked cars, RVs, and
tents, and that finding a space was looking to be very unlikely.
Luckily, we discovered that someone who owned a house with a large back
garden which backed onto the river had decided to turn their entire
garden into a car park for launch viewers, as well as offering coffee
and toilets in return for a charity donation. Sold. We paid for our place and then returned to the hotel in order to get a
couple of hours sleep for what would, we assumed, be a long night ahead. We weren’t wrong. Getting back to Titusville didn’t turn out to be a problem,
which somewhat surprised us. We parked our car and waited inside it, for
the weather was very cold, listening to NASA TV’s audio channel on my
radio scanner. A few minutes before the launch, we ventured into the
frigid air, setup our tripod and… listened to the radio as NASA
scrubbed the launch. Bummer. So, at a little past 4:30am, we got back into the car and headed home.
Very, very slowly. After what should have been a journey of a little over an hour, we
arrived back at the hotel just after 8am, as it seemed half the
population of Florida, or perhaps the entire USA, was hiding in dark
corners of Titusville and all attempted to leave at the same time. So 24 hours after I had awoken the previous day, I had had two hours of
sleep, far too many hours in the car, and no shuttle launch. I must be insane, because the launch is rescheduled for 4:14am this
morning, and it appears we’re going back…
breakfast, made a bee line
directly for the Kennedy Space Center. I’ve rambled about this place in
the past, so I won’t go on about it again, but we spent much of the day
there, I got some fantastic photos, and just before 5, we left and
headed for Titusville, our intended destination for watching the shuttle
launch scheduled for 4am the following morning – this morning. We were surprised to find that, even 11 hours before the scheduled
launch, the Titusville coast (from which you observe the launch across a
large river) was rapidly becoming packed with parked cars, RVs, and
tents, and that finding a space was looking to be very unlikely.
Luckily, we discovered that someone who owned a house with a large back
garden which backed onto the river had decided to turn their entire
garden into a car park for launch viewers, as well as offering coffee
and toilets in return for a charity donation. Sold. We paid for our place and then returned to the hotel in order to get a
couple of hours sleep for what would, we assumed, be a long night ahead. We weren’t wrong. Getting back to Titusville didn’t turn out to be a problem,
which somewhat surprised us. We parked our car and waited inside it, for
the weather was very cold, listening to NASA TV’s audio channel on my
radio scanner. A few minutes before the launch, we ventured into the
frigid air, setup our tripod and… listened to the radio as NASA
scrubbed the launch. Bummer. So, at a little past 4:30am, we got back into the car and headed home.
Very, very slowly. After what should have been a journey of a little over an hour, we
arrived back at the hotel just after 8am, as it seemed half the
population of Florida, or perhaps the entire USA, was hiding in dark
corners of Titusville and all attempted to leave at the same time. So 24 hours after I had awoken the previous day, I had had two hours of
sleep, far too many hours in the car, and no shuttle launch. I must be insane, because the launch is rescheduled for 4:14am this
morning, and it appears we’re going back…
